Storage Solutions 3TB HDD & SSD - Buying Help

Status
Not open for further replies.
gREen

gREen

Im Special, gREen.
Herald
Hello Folks,
Looking to backup my important data and setup a ssd boot drive.
So, looking for 3TB(can extend to 4 too) external HDD and 40 or 60 GB SSD.
Basically confused whether to get single 3TB or 2x2TB. Is there any problem as i read 3TB got some issues.
The external hdd should be durable(data is sensitive and dont have another copy) and which one is better(Seagate or WD) as i dont want any further issues.
no idea about which ssd to go, put some light on.

Btw, is it good to get online or thru sp.road?
Ps. lower the price is better.
Thanks.
 
surely @gREen if data is your priority you should actively consider RAID 1 at the minimum or other Raid levels according to your requirements and budgets, rather than going for performance.

From my past experience over the last 7-8months I would not suggest Segate, Lost two 1Tb drives already..
 
Last edited by a moderator:
abracadabra said:
surely @gREen if data is your priority you should actively consider RAID 1 at the minimum or other Raid levels according to your requirements and budgets, rather than going for performance.

From my past experience over the last 7-8months I would not suggest Segate, Lost two 1Tb drives already..
Click to expand...

Yes, the data should be main priority so can extend the budget for more durable one.
Btw, what's raid 1 or other levels means. Shocking to hear about seagate. Except 2 Hdd, all my internal & external ones are seagate. Never had any issues still.
And can you suggest which external drive to go for.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Suggest which Hdd & ssd to go for.
Btw, is it okay to get thru online or thru street like sp road.
 
gREen said:
Yes, the data should be main priority so can't extend the budget for more durable one.
Btw, what's raid 1 or other levels means. Shocking to hear about seagate. Except 2 Hdd, all my internal & external ones are seagate. Never had any issues still.
And can you suggest which external drive to go for.
Click to expand...

These ones are worth a look --
Hope this helps. Cheerio!

gREen said:
Btw, is it okay to get thru online or thru street like sp road.
Click to expand...

S.P. Road will be cheaper than online, take down the drives you are interested in, check the prices on street and buy whichever feels decent to you.

For SSD it is best that you stick to onlyssd.com and the following are good picks --
  • OCZ Vertex4 128G ~7500/-
  • Crucial M4 120GB ~8200/-
 
ALL hard drives will fail. sooner or later. If data is important, you need a backup. If you can't afford backup, you cannot afford to keep the data safe, simple.

Backup is better than RAID, because backup protects from
1. Accidental data corruption,
2. Silent hardware failure - RAM and hard drive issues cause silent corruption. These can in turn be triggered by faulty power supplies / motherboards.
3. Virus / malware corrupting data
4. Your "nephew" deleting / corrupting data, as shown by Raina

RAID only protects from non-silent hard drive failure. Options :
A) If data is less than 1 TB, and you have only Rs 9000, get 2 1 TB external hard drives, preferably of different brands. Periodically copy from one to another.
B) If data is less than 2 TB, and you have only Rs 13000, get 2 2 TB external hard drives, preferably of different brands. Periodically copy from one to another.
 
amitkher said:
ALL hard drives will fail. sooner or later. If data is important, you need a backup. If you can't afford backup, you cannot afford to keep the data safe, simple.

Backup is better than RAID, because backup protects from
1. Accidental data corruption,
2. Silent hardware failure - RAM and hard drive issues cause silent corruption. These can in turn be triggered by faulty power supplies / motherboards.
3. Virus / malware corrupting data
4. Your "nephew" deleting / corrupting data, as shown by Raina

RAID only protects from non-silent hard drive failure. Options :
A) If data is less than 1 TB, and you have only Rs 9000, get 2 1 TB external hard drives, preferably of different brands. Periodically copy from one to another.
B) If data is less than 2 TB, and you have only Rs 13000, get 2 2 TB external hard drives, preferably of different brands. Periodically copy from one to another.
Click to expand...

Okay, here it is,
I currently own 2x2tb freeagent goflex and getting a new one from wd.
So, what's raid and all those stuffs and should I copy each time to different Hdd or is there any other ways to do so.
 
ALPHA17 said:
These ones are worth a look --
Hope this helps. Cheerio!



S.P. Road will be cheaper than online, take down the drives you are interested in, check the prices on street and buy whichever feels decent to you.

For SSD it is best that you stick to onlyssd.com and the following are good picks --
  • OCZ Vertex4 128G ~7500/-
  • Crucial M4 120GB ~8200/-
Click to expand...
@ALPHA17 bro thanks but I'm lookin for 2tb or more and not 1tb.
Any idea about 60/80gb ssd.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
gREen said:
@ALPHA17 bro thanks but I'm lookin for 2tb or more and not 1tb.
Any idea about 60/80gb ssd.
Click to expand...

For a 64GB SSD go for the OCZ Vertex4. Again onlyssd.com.

Here is what RAID is --> RAID - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, if you want to setup RAID in your current drives you will either need to implement a hardware level RAID (after formatting the drives) OR you can do a software level RAID. I have setup RAID 0 on 2 x320GB Seagate Barracuda's (hardware level and my boot-drive) and I have a data dump in the form of a Western Digital 1TB Green drive (not in RAID) and all this is internal.

For 2TB drives again, scour through flipkart.com and other e-tailer sites. Here a few options I found --
Also larger the drive is (capacity-wise) the more unreliable it becomes. Cheerio!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
gREen said:
Okay, here it is,
I currently own 2x2tb freeagent goflex and getting a new one from wd.
So, what's raid and all those stuffs and should I copy each time to different Hdd or is there any other ways to do so.
Click to expand...


RAID 0 is splitting the data between 2 drives for better read/write speed.

RAID 1 is duplicating the data between 2 drives for good data redundancy, at the cost of disk space.

RAID 5 is splitting the data between 3 or more drives, including parity information, so that if 1 drive fails you can add another drive, rebuild the RAID array, and not lose any data. RAID 5 is the best because you get data protection without loosing hard drive space.


The only problem with RAID is changing motherboards. If you've got an Intel chipset then I think you don't have a problem if you're changing to another Intel chipset. I don't think it's that easy to migrate a RAID on an nVidia or AMD chipset.
 
gREen said:
Okay, here it is,
I currently own 2x2tb freeagent goflex and getting a new one from wd.
So, what's raid and all those stuffs and should I copy each time to different Hdd or is there any other ways to do so.
Click to expand...

Both 2 TB hard drives are full and you are going to get another one to fill? Existing data is in multiple drives, or each data item is in a single drive only?

Don't worry about raid, you don't need it


Edit : without backup, you end up like this http://www.techenclave.com/storage-solutions/1tb-seagate-hdd-dead-repair-139666/




.
 
will be taking OCZ Vertex4 128G, thank @ALPHA17 for the suggestion.
Btw, is ssdonly's price is cheap or equal to sp road.
@ch@ts thanks for explaing as the wiki page is kinda scary with the formula.
But dont get it clearly. And i have nvidia chipset mobo.
How to create Raid 1 but its for only internal only option, i think so. But whats with external drives.




- - - Updated - - -

amitkher said:
Both 2 TB hard drives are full and you are going to get another one to fill? Existing data is in multiple drives, or each data item is in a single drive only?

Don't worry about raid, you don't need it


Edit : without backup, you end up like this http://www.techenclave.com/storage-solutions/1tb-seagate-hdd-dead-repair-139666/


.
Click to expand...

yup, both is full, different data.
no wanted to end up like that :scared14:
so a precaution

- - - Updated - - -

confused to choose which variant to go for?
should i go for WD passport or WD my book or whatsover?
which is more durable?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
gREen said:
will be taking OCZ Vertex4 128G, thank @ALPHA17 for the suggestion.
Btw, is ssdonly's price is cheap or equal to sp road.
But dont get it clearly. And i have nvidia chipset mobo.
How to create Raid 1 but its for only internal only option, i think so. But whats with external drives.
Click to expand...


onlyssd.com's price is better than S.P. Roads and comes with complementary free delivery on all orders.

Okay give us the name of the motherboard please OR at-least the chipset version (specifically South-Bridge).

Yes RAID can only be done on internal drive, a NAS-Box allows for RAID on external drives with specific driver suites. RAID if you are doing on the hardware level has to be done in the following steps --
  • During boot enter the BIOS;
  • Change ports from ATAPI and IDE standard --> RAID
  • this shall engage the RAID controller (on the motherboard);
  • the computer will restart once you exit BIOS and the RAID controller will guide you through the steps to configure the RAID on selected drives. Select the RAID you want (0, 1, 0 + 1 OR 5);
  • next your hard-drives will be thoroughly formatted (you loose al data on them) and in the next reboot you got to reinstall the OS and all the applications you had.
This is setting up RAID in a nut-shell some details might differ chipset-to-chipset, controller-to-controller but this is the gist of it.

So now decide what you want to do.

Hope this helped, Cheerio!

gREen said:
confused to choose which variant to go for?
should i go for WD passport or WD my book or whatsover?
which is more durable?
Click to expand...

Western Digital MyBooks's and Seagate FreeAgent series are not portable and require a power-adapter to supply them with power (apart from the USB cable to transfer data), also they are older 3.5" based solution so slower transfer rates.

Western Digital MyPassport and Seagate's Go-Flex series are portable 2.5" drives with faster transfer speeds, no need of an extra power-brick.

I suggest you take the portable drives over the non-portable ones, the older drives are very sensitive and cannot be moved OR disturbed while a transfer of data is on-going, the smaller drives are a little forgiving in this aspect.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
ALPHA17 said:
onlyssd.com's price is better than S.P. Roads and comes with complementary free delivery on all orders.

Okay give us the name of the motherboard please OR at-least the chipset version (specifically South-Bridge).

Yes RAID can only be done on internal drive, a NAS-Box allows for RAID on external drives with specific driver suites. RAID if you are doing on the hardware level has to be done in the following steps --
  • During boot enter the BIOS;
  • Change ports from ATAPI and IDE standard --> RAID
  • this shall engage the RAID controller (on the motherboard);
  • the computer will restart once you exit BIOS and the RAID controller will guide you through the steps to configure the RAID on selected drives. Select the RAID you want (0, 1, 0 + 1 OR 5);
  • next your hard-drives will be thoroughly formatted (you loose al data on them) and in the next reboot you got to reinstall the OS and all the applications you had.
This is setting up RAID in a nut-shell some details might differ chipset-to-chipset, controller-to-controller but this is the gist of it.

So now decide what you want to do.

Hope this helped, Cheerio!



Western Digital MyBooks's and Seagate FreeAgent series are not portable and require a power-adapter to supply them with power (apart from the USB cable to transfer data), also they are older 3.5" based solution so slower transfer rates.

Western Digital MyPassport and Seagate's Go-Flex series are portable 2.5" drives with faster transfer speeds, no need of an extra power-brick.

I suggest you take the portable drives over the non-portable ones, the older drives are very sensitive and cannot be moved OR disturbed while a transfer of data is on-going, the smaller drives are a little forgiving in this aspect.
Click to expand...

oei, thanks you brother.
ordering OCZ Vertex4 128G thru onlyssd, ssd thing over.
Now, i dont wanted faster or slimmer external hdd,
i will take backup and kept it safe on cupboard, this is my backup if something goes wierd.(thats why i posted in main post, cheaper is better but will pay more for durable one)
And i will pass Raid and those stufffs as im going with external hdd.
thanks again
 
I am in a similar situation hence starting a new thread on same topic doesn't make sense, I hope its ok to post here.

Need to upgrade mainly for data access speed (mainly graphic editing) to ssd as main OS drive for a 4 yr old system (see config below)
Windows 7 x64 build 7600,
E6300@1.86 Ghz,P5B-Dlx Wifi,
4x1Gb Transcend JetRAM DDR2 PC2-6400 800MHz,
XFX 7600GT,
Seagate SATA2 HDD 3.5 TB,Samsung DVDRW,
APC UPS 800VA,Logitech wireless mouse,
PSU CoolerMaster GX 450Watts.

Option 1. Buy Corsair 120GB Force 3 SSD as main OS drive & keep all data on other 2TB hdd

Option 2. Buy Corsair 60GB Force 3 SSD x2 disk & make a raid (I think my hardware supports, else software raid) put the OS on this raid 0 for super speeds both in booting & data access.

Option 3. Buy Corsair 60GB Force 3 SSD x2, use 1 SSD for the OS & another SSD for scratch disk & page file to have performance boost without the risk of data loss in raid 0

These are 6gb/s drives which are backward compatible so they would work atleast 3gb/s (not sure if my asus motherboard have driver updates supporting 6gb/s)

What do you suggest is the better option out of 3 options using ssd?


Now on data backup, from past many yrs experience I have found that best data back up in still writing it on 2 DVDs & store them safely 1 on location & another on off location. No other method are fail proof, keeping the data on disk has too many risk, out of which accidental deletion without going to recycle bin is the biggest & that has happened with me when I accidentally deleted 760gb of data, it took me 5 days to recover all that data but it was a nightmare as I was not sure if all can be recovered or not, it costed me over 6000/- for doing so.

Lessons learnt I backup to dual layer dvds now.
I wish there was a way to lock the data so it cant be erased at all but can only be accessed like we do it on dvds.
 
Option 1. With RAID, you lose TRIM on SSDs except if you're using the Z77 chipset.
Why RAID 0? A normal SSD is fast enough, especially for your usage patterns.
 
Oh I didn't know that TRIM wont work on raid need to explore that a bit.
Raid 0 mainly due to speed issue, I know its risky but I will have only the OS loaded which will strip data on 2 drives on that no data will be stored, moreover ssd are more secure than normal Hdd.

So you suggest Option1 but wont the option 3 a better way to gain speed?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom